Note: In no way am I poking fun at the pregnancy vitamin supplementation program that cured spina bifida by preventing the diagnosis. That said.... What sane person would not want to prevent a lifelong diagnosis that could be a severe, even life threatening handicap requiring a lifetime of care? What doctor would not want to recommend something as simple as a vitamin to prevent this severe, terrible diagnosis?

But what if this benign vitamin intervention during pregnancy, which became so ubiquitous as to literally become "white bread" was found to perhaps be associated with life threatening FOOD ALLERGIES? What is a researcher recommended further research to dig deeper into the science, because while the spina bifida was a birth defect no parent wanted for his or her child, the food allergies were also a diagnosis that no parent wanted for his or her child? Would the vitamin makers make sure to PULL HIS PAPER from publication and pillory him for say, 20 years?

In other news, does this tongue make my cheek look fat?From USDA: Beginning in January 1998, the B vitamin folic acid will be added to enriched bread, flour, cornmeal, rice, pasta, and other grain products, according to a 1996 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation.

The regulation grew out of evidence that the risk of spina bifida and other neural tube defects in newborn infants dropped if mothers took more folic acid before pregnancy.

In 1992, the Public Health Service recommended that all women of childbearing age consume 400 micrograms (mcg) of folic acid daily to reduce risk. That 400 millionths of a gram could spare many of the 2,500 infants born in the United States with neural tube defects each year.

...“The balance of evidence from this study suggests that the benefits of folate fortification at the currently mandated level would greatly outweigh the risks...

Orlando, FL - Research being presented at the 2018 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) and World Allergy Organization (WAO) Joint Congress suggests that folic acid exposure in utero could have an effect on whether children develop food allergy.

Folate, or vitamin B9, is available in both natural and synthetic forms. Folic acid is the synthetic form of folate and is often recommended to pregnant women as a way of preventing neural tube defects in their children, like spina bifida. When folic acid is consumed in higher quantities, some of this folic acid is not metabolized and circulates in the blood as “unmetabolized folic acid.”

In a nested case control study performed in the Boston Birth Cohort, scientists found that higher levels of unmetabolized folic acid measured at birth was associated with the development of food allergy.

A subset of children in the cohort were tested at birth and early life for their levels of unmetabolized folic acid and the main folate metabolite involved in biochemical processes in the body,5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF). Diet, clinical history and specific-IgE to common food allergens were also assessed in early life. Out of the 1,394 children included in this study, 507 had a food sensitization and 78 had a food allergy.

“Interestingly, while the mean total folate levels at birth were lower among the children that developed a food allergy, mean levels of the synthetic folic acid derivative, unmetabolized folic acid, were higher,” said author Emily McGowan, MD.

The authors suspect that increased levels of unmetabolized folic acid may be due to increased exposure to synthetic folic acid in utero or underlying genetic differences.

“More research is needed to conclude whether mothers should consider consuming different sources of folate like leafy green vegetables, citrus fruits, beans or lentils instead of synthetic forms of folate,” said author Corinne Keet, MD, MS, PhD. READ MORE HERE.

"We are in an age where obsessions with predictions, with control, with information have dominated our lifestyle. We meet people with intentions, we only go to certain places to make certain friends, we ignore or escape unwanted encounters. Whereas Chopin embraced encounters, both in the world and in his mind. He had accepted the bleak conditions in which he had found himself, and penned an interpretation that created hisidentity. He chose to identify himself as a Pole, despite his father’s French origins, his French citizenship and residence, his Parisian years of prolific successes; just as he chose to savour all the despair of Poland’s tragic fate, and experience them as his own. Chopin’s life was a manifestation of the existentialist thesis:

One is what one chooses to be, through one’s actions.

With the creating of meaning, of beauty, comes the creation of one’s identity, which is conditioned upon the embracing of encounters, even the most traumatising. Yet, it is this embracing of encounters that the ordinary folks evade, especially in this reckless age. And it is this lack of an appreciation for encounters, for the unknown, for suffering that renders our lives dull.

It was not that Chopin had to create in the face of immense obstacles, but that those obstacles were necessary for his creations. They were his acceptance of the infinite responsibility that came with his infinite freedom.

The project illustrates this message with the Parisian letters of Chopin. His music, photos of his artefacts, his letters, and the poems of his contemporaries are weaved together to tell a story of Chopin’s life as a figure that constantly defines and redefines itself, a figure who savoured all the torments it had to bear, and turned them into the most delicate fragments of a beautiful life."

Absolutely, more research is needed!!! First, they need to match a similar sample size of children to this sample, whose mothers used an organic, whole foods pre-natal supplement, that had methyl folate sources of the vitamin, and compare levels of food sensitivity/allergy in this group. Then, they need to test all of the children who developed food sensitivities/allergies for the MTHFR gene varient. We have been saying all along that many children with autism, who are vaccine injured, have this and other gene varients that predisposed them to being unable to excrete the toxic soup in vaccines (as well as synthetically derived vitamins). In our efforts to help decrease the number of pregnant moms from becoming new member of our vaccine-injured children's club, we need to also encourage them to reject the prescriptions from their OB-GYN for crap pre-natals, and instead buy reputable brands of organic whole food pre-natal vitamins. Yet another example of why allopathic, covered by insurance, traditional western medicine is hazardous to you and your child's health.

Why folic acid enrichment of foods, rather than methyl folate enrichment? It's cheaper! Will anything change as a result of this paper? Right. On a positive note, it appears that USDuh is putting out signals that the 2020 Dietary Guidelines update will be based upon actual science rather than food industry needs, unlike any previous version.

This massive far reaching folic acid intervention done mostly under the public's radar as though it was nothing, just a simple addition of a vitamin to the food supply and to prenatal vitamins, nothing to be concerned about, it can only help not harm, is a lesson in the need to be vigilant and wary of the potential folly of medical and scientific meddling, and of the need for personal science education so one can understand what the heck these idiots are doing. Thanks, Kim.

Purchase the whole berry and grind it yourself, its not that much work. Tasting this wheat brings one back to the source of life. Real food, Real Nutrition!
KIDS love the pancakes, they devour them like they "know" they need the nutrients!

Its shocking to me that humanity took all the bran, middlings, wheat germ, wheat germ oil out of the berry and produced "white flour", like its some kind of god? and then the Govt gets involved and mandates producers to add synthetic folic acid, like all of a sudden its okay to eat the flour?
White flour is the devil disguised.

Folic acid during pregnancy is responsible for a lot more than food allergies. Take a look at best-seller book "Dirty Genes" and all of the work by Dr. Ben Lynch and his colleagues in functional medicine about the genetic impairment or dirtying of MTHFR gene. Over half the population has this reduced enzyme and therefore should never consume anything with folic acid. When they do, their impaired methylation becomes further impaired, meaning they cannot detoxify or do any of the other up to 200 processes that methylation provides for our body. This leads to miscarriages (when MTHFR impaired pregnant women supplement with folic acid prenatals), cancer, neurological diseases, brain diseases, and a host of autoimmune problems....along with a greater risk of having a child diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

Usually, it is not so simple to just add a SYNTHETIC vitamin and assume you've taken away all risk. There are always downstream effects. Had our government been wiser and added methyl folate instead of synthetic folic acid, we would have a much better result.